Article II
by jippy
Summary: Digimon Adventure sequel to retcon 'unpopular' epilogue by Paro Dy and Sat Ire. Toei Animation has announced that the upcoming Digimon Adventure sequel will retroactively alter its previous season's epilogue out of existence. Published in The Japan Times.


**_Digimon Adventure_ sequel to retcon 'unpopular' epilogue**

_By PARO DY and SAT IRE_

Toei Animation has announced that the upcoming _Digimon Adventure _sequel will retroactively alter its previous season's epilogue out of existence.

_Digimon Adventure_'s second season, _Zero Two_ (_02_), ended with a 25-year jump into the future where the 12 main characters were shown to be married with children and jobs.

It was the characters' occupational choices and, in particular, the marriages between Sora Takenouchi and Yamato Ishida, and Miyako Inoue and Ken Ichijouji, that faced intense fan backlash for over a decade.

A vocal portion of the fandom have harshly criticised the epilogue since it aired in 2001, claiming that the writers must have been "smoking crack".

The staff have all denied that they took cocaine in the studio at the time of working on the original series.

Series director Hiroyuki Kakudou has acknowledged that romantic relationships between his fictional characters were far more important than he initially thought.

"Although romantic relationships made up only 5 per cent of the story – and that's being generous – we now realise from online fan reactions the significance of romance to the overarching storyline of Digimon," he said.

"Fuck what we were trying to portray – fuck the characters' growth – we should have focussed more on hooking all the characters up _correctly_ to please 10-year-old shippers. I see that now."

Screenwriter Genki Yoshimura has also apologised for her part in making Sora and Yamato fall in love with each other – creating the most hated romantic relationship in anime history.

"I'm so, so sorry for failing so much at writing Sora's character," she said.

"I created her, I fleshed her out, I made her who she is . . . but if only I had known who she _should've_ loved, too, then the epilogue might've been better received."

Yoshimura has also admitted that she penned both the Christmas episode and the epilogue, covering her face in humiliation as she spoke.

"Instead of making Sora fall in love with her childhood best friend [main protagonist Taichi Yagami], I made her go for the pretty boy," she sighed in regret. "And Sora as a fashion designer? What was I thinking?"

Screenwriter Atsushi Maekawa has also apologised for his role in making Sora and Yamato's relationship canon.

"I did foreshadow Sora and Yamato's future marriage in the first season – but I want it to be known that I did so reluctantly," he stressed.

"If you watch my episodes, you'll see that I personally 'shipped' Taichi and Yamato together myself. I'm a gay man and I'm afraid I let my personal preferences get in the way of telling a story – because that shit obviously wasn't friendship."

While Taichi and Yamato were a popular homosexual pairing for a lot of viewers, it was the heterosexual pairings of Taichi and Sora, and Takeru Takaishi and Hikari Yagami, that many fans felt deserved to be made canon.

Screenwriter Chiaki J. Konaka smirked as he admitted to being responsible for "teasing a shitload of Hikari and Takeru fans and ruining their fucking childhoods".

"I wasn't involved at all in the first season, but I was told to write the second season's 13th episode," he said.

"Hikari was to be the central character in that episode . . . and Takeru was basically her only friend, so I had to use him in it too. [Toei Animation] had approached me to write for the second season, giving me the impression that I had a huge part in it, but then told me I actually only had _one single episode _to write – and I was offended by that."

Konaka said he was then inspired by the internet to "troll" Toei Animation and the other screenwriters, who all received more episodes to write than he did. He felt trolling the fans of the series would also be "epic".

"I decided to cocktease the idea of Hikari and Takeru being a couple in episode 13 – as well as introduce the Dark Ocean – and then got the fuck out of the studio!" he laughed.

"The other screenwriters didn't know what had hit them – they struggled throughout the entire second season to fix my plot holes."

When it came to the pairing of Taichi and Sora, the series was criticised for not following the popular television trope of the lead male and female characters getting together in "any given series".

"That's like the law," said a Digimon fan who wishes to remain anonymous. "Taichi and Sora should have ended up together because the hero _always _gets the main girl."

Kakudou laughed heartily when told.

"I don't agree with their point – have they seen _Harry Potter_ or more than five shows? – but I admit that, upon reflecting on the series, Taichi and Sora _should_ have ended up together," he said.

"I'm in awe of how I could mistake their undeniable love chemistry for friendship all those years ago. And the series was _my_ vision!"

Screenwriter Reiko Yoshida – who wrote all four _Digimon Adventure _and _02_ movies – foresaw the error in Kakudou's storytelling techniques and used the second and fourth movies to push the superior romantic relationship between Taichi and Sora.

"I didn't have much involvement in the actual series, only writing just a few episodes for each season, but I was told to write all the movies – and I did what I could in those," she said.

"I had about two minutes for Sora in _Our War Game!_ and I thought her first crush should be on her best friend; that made sense and so I did it.

"It's not my fault Kakudou didn't inform me about his plans for Sora and Yamato in the first season."

Yoshida said she was "disappointed" when Sora began dating Yamato in the second season's Christmas episode – but that didn't stop her from doing what she could to "right Kakudou's wrong".

"Kakudou expected too much from the show's target audience – he gave kids too much credit," she explained.

"Face it: kids are dumb. How many of them are going to notice foreshadowing for a future romantic relationship that was largely dependent on the use of literary devices? The average kid doesn't even know what a literary device is. Heck, grown adults have trouble fully grasping the concept.

"So I knew that, in the eyes of a child, Taichi and Sora would be the more obvious choice for a romantic relationship. And so I went for it."

Though Yoshida was not informed that Sora and Yamato were 'endgame' when she wrote the implied crush between Sora and Taichi in the second movie, Sora and Yamato's marriage was revealed to her by the time it came to writing the fourth and final movie.

"I was forced to add a photo of Sora and Yamato on a date in _Diablomon Strikes Back_ because the two got together in the second season," she said.

"But I'm a petty motherfucker and so I made sure to make Sora lean towards Taichi – as opposed to her boyfriend Yamato – when the wind picked up and blew leaves in their faces.

"It was such a small thing . . . but I had a lot of faith that fans would understand what I was trying to imply in that scene and blow it up to be what it is today: a giant 'fuck you' to Sora and Yamato's relationship.

"Because what shows true love better than leaning slightly behind someone for protection from leaves?"

Kakudou had these final words for fans:

"Please look forward to the new series where we redeem ourselves by fixing the problems in the epilogue. Taichi and Sora will get their sex on. Ken and Miyako will die in a fire. And, most importantly, Takeru and Hikari will get married surrounded by real life angels.

"That's how _02_ should have ended – and we're proud to bring fans the ending they deserved in this new series.

"Because this shit isn't subjective or anything."

The new _Digimon Adventure_ sequel is slated to air in spring 2015.

* * *

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** So I thought the byline of this "article" — "By PARO DY and SAT IRE" — would make it _very_ clear that this was, you know, _a parody and satire_. But apparently some people on Tumblr actually thought this was real? LOL.

No, this isn't "real". It's completely fake news. I wrote this. Me. Jippy. I made it all up (ISN'T THAT OBVIOUS FROM THE RIDICULOUS CONTENT?). It's a joke. Toei Animation are never going to retcon the epilogue. :)

I wrote this around the writers' credits — which are all true. So the only truth this "article" has is:

- Kakudou did plan Sorato from the beginning of the first season and only told some of his writing staff to foreshadow it, for an originally planned first season epilogue.

- Yoshimura was in charge of Sora's character and wrote Sorato in both seasons, including the Christmas episode and the epilogue.

- Maekawa was in charge of Yamato's character and wrote Sorato in both seasons, as well as Taito. He is also, indeed, gay.

- Yoshida wrote very little for the actual series but did write all four movies. She did not know about the Sorato endgame marriage at the time of writing Taiora in _Our War Game! _(middle part of _Digimon: The Movie_). She also wrote _Diablomon Strikes Back (Revenge of Diaboromon_) with knowledge that Sorato were together/endgame.

- Konaka wrote the second season episode that Takari fans cite as being the "biggest" Takari episode — episode 13. He did not write anything else for the second season (and he wrote nothing at all for the first season).


End file.
